Method and apparatus for forming substrate surfaces with exposed crystal lattice using accelerated neutral atom beam
AssigneeExogenesis Corporation
InventorsSean R. Kirkpatrick, Kiet A. Chau, Thy Yam, Michael J. Walsh
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Abstract
A method for removing amorphous regions from a surface of a crystal substrate uses an accelerated neutral beam including reactive gas species for removing or reactively modifying material surfaces without sputtering. Accelerated neutral atom beam enabled surface reactions remove surface contaminants from substrate surfaces to create an interface region with exposed crystal lattice in preparation for next phase processing.
Claims19
A method for reactively preparing a surface of a substrate comprising the steps of:
- providing a reduced pressure chamber;
- forming a gas cluster ion beam comprising halogen gas cluster ions within the reduced pressure chamber;
- accelerating the halogen gas cluster ions to form an accelerated halogen gas cluster ion beam along a beam path within the reduced pressure chamber;
- promoting fragmentation and/or dissociation of at least a portion of the accelerated halogen gas cluster ions along the beam path;
- removing charged particles from the beam path to form an accelerated neutral halogen beam along the beam path in the reduced pressure chamber;
- holding the substrate in the beam path;
- irradiating a portion of a surface of the substrate with the accelerated neutral halogen beam, wherein the accelerated neutral halogen beam reactively removes surface atoms and exposes an underlying crystalline surface interface region of the substrate.
A method for additively preparing a surface of a substrate, the method comprising the steps of:
- providing a reduced pressure chamber;
- forming a gas cluster ion beam comprising oxygen gas cluster ions within the reduced pressure chamber;
- accelerating the oxygen gas cluster ions to form an accelerated oxygen gas cluster ion beam along a beam path within the reduced pressure chamber;
- promoting fragmentation and/or dissociation of at least a portion of the accelerated oxygen gas cluster ions along the beam path;
- removing charged particles from the beam path to form an accelerated neutral oxygen beam along the beam path in the reduced pressure chamber;
- holding the substrate in the beam path;
- irradiating at least a portion of a surface of the substrate with the accelerated neutral oxygen beam, wherein the accelerated neutral oxygen beam reactively interacts with the substrate to form a stable oxide layer on the surface of the substrate.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.